3 Ways Ontario, Canada Is Leading the Charge in Mobile Payments

MasterCard ranked Canada as the second most prepared country in the world for widespread mobile payments adoption. Here are some of the reasons why.

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Over the past week I participated in a tour of the fledgling mobile payments industry in Ontario, Canada. While the U.S. is bogged down on the path to mobile payments by complexity and fragmentation, Ontario has spent the last couple of years building a payments infrastructure that seems ready for the jump to mobile payments. We take a look at several factors that have helped Ontario take the lead in mobile payments readiness.

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio

Yeah it definitely seems like Taxis are ahead of the MTA vending machines on payments technology, though wierdly Port Aurhority Bus Terminal machines accept Google Wallet, though I've never seen anyone use it!

Interesting. I had a card with the tap and go technology a number of years ago, but only a few retailers offered the option to tap and pay. Then my card provider discontinued the tap and go option on the card, and i haven't used it since. It seems like all of the stars (card, retailer, consumer) have to be aligned for tap and go to work!

I think in NYC it's really more of an issue of the cards. In Canada all of the new cards being issued by MasterCard and Visa have tap and go technology. That obviously isn't the case. And then once tap and go cards are issued, there will have to be a big educational effort on the part of issuers and card companies to spread awareness. All of that might not come until more tap and go terminals are out there, but we are starting to see them in the PATH and in yellow cabs. I wonder if tap and go terminals are starting to pop up anywhere in the States outside of NYC.

Interestingly in NYC its the taxis that are leading the way on tap and go. I hadn't noticed it before, but MasterCard told us in our meeting with them that they helped to install tap-and-go card terminals in all of the yellow cabs in the city. When I took the cab home from the airport the other night I inspected the card reader, and sure enough it had the tap and go symbol on it.

I read the MTA is looking to phase out MTA cards within 10 years (+/-), it would be surprising if they weren't considering tap and go alternatives. (Does the PATH already have tap and go today?) I certainly agree that on the large MTA scale it would push our metropolis to quickly embrace tap technology.

Also interesting, given all the success in Canada I wonder if a few prominent "ahead of the curve" retailers like Starbucks will beta a system.

I expect that once it starts, it will roll out like an epidemic. Exciting times indeed...

"Tap and go" seems like a great way for payments. I wonder if the the NYC subway system, with its clunky "swipe (and swipe again) and go", may look to tap and go in the future. Getting a major metro system like the NYC MTA on 'tap and go' would do a lot to help consumers (at least in the NYC area) get comfortable with tap and go. Perhaps it will take something like this to get US consumers to adopt technology that our northern neighbors are enjoying.